U.S. Pat. No. 4,010,627 discloses a panty garment and blank and U.S. Pat. No. 4,043,156 discloses the method of knitting the panty blank of the aforesaid patent. The panty garment of these two patents is knit entirely by rotary knitting on a circular knitting machine by first knitting a plurality of successive complete courses to form a seamless lower trunk portion, knitting spaced seamless nontubular front and rear narrowed panels on spaced-apart sets or groups of adjacent needles on opposite sides of the needle cylinder to form fashioned front and rear panels, and then knitting corresponding front and rear crotch panels as continuations of the corresponding front and rear panels by knitting successive partial courses of the same length on groups of adjacent needles on opposite sides of the needle cylinder. The panty is then formed by joining together the end portions of the crotch panels to form leg openings on opposite sides thereof. A suitable elastic trimming may then be attached around the leg openings.
The knitting of individual panty garment blanks, in accordance with these prior patents, requires the knitting of pairs of spaced-apart partial courses with less than half of the needles being in an active knitting position during each rotation of the needle cylinder while the remaining needles are in an inactive or idle position and are not producing fabric. Thus, the same length of time is required for knitting the complete successive courses in the lower trunk portion as the time required for knitting only narrow nontubular partial courses in the fashioned front and rear and crotch panels, and many of the needles in the needle cylinder are in an idle condition during the rotary knitting of the partial courses of the fashioned front and rear panels and the crotch panels. The knitting of individual panty garment blanks in the manner disclosed in these prior patents is relatively slow, thereby increasing the production costs.